The Inquisitr » qmeme

Techmeme and the Noise Problem

Duncan Riley — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:40:55 +0000

Bitchmeming about Techmeme has long been a favorite past-time of bored early adopters over numerous weekends in the last year. The arguments are usually similar, and revolve around variations of Techmeme is to focused on reporting news from large companies and/ or ignores small startups, and that it is dominated by a few sites while others don’t get a look in.

I’ve been a Techmeme fan for a long time, and I still religiously visit the site daily, although I have found myself using it less and less as writing here at The Inquisitr has allowed me to move away from pleasing someone with a Techmeme headline, to writing about what I love or am interested in, Techmeme headline or not be damned. I’ve also had the privilege of meeting Gave Rivera before and as well as being a great bloke, he’s smart as well…and I should know, I’ve tried multiple times to get a Techmeme clone scripted without any success.

While I recognize and sympathize with the arguments of people like Dave Winer, who started a conversation around Techmeme ignoring the little guy yesterday on FriendFeed, I don’t think Gabe, or Techmeme are to blame. I also don’t believe that there is much, if anything at all Gabe can do to address these concerns (although to his credit he has reached out).

Techmeme tracks news and ranks news on the number of people talking about the topic. That many people talk about large news from big companies is always going to be a given.

Yes, Techmeme was once different, but there also wasn’t nearly as much noise around large startups then either. Google is so large that there is nearly always one Google story on Techmeme every day, often more. Facebook, MySpace and social networking has gained so many users that every large company in that space is a news cycle unto itself. Twitter is such a trainwreck that it puts Britney Spears to shame in the sad-publicity stakes.

So what to do?

In part, ways to find the smaller, hidden stories are already all around us. FriendFeed delivers a daily dose of new, different and interesting opinions, people and startups. FriendFeed also offers a personal meme tracker via their best of feature, a feature that not only delivers output in RSS, it is also the basis for QMeme, our little meme tracker here on The Inquisitr. I’m still surprised more people aren’t sharing their FriendFeed best of feeds this way, because we all have the ability to offer alternatives.

However, people want public, no fuss meme tracking, which is in part why I created QMeme (and the beta, non widget based based version should be coming soon). I’m still refining the way it shows data, and what it shows. It would be better still with some extra data coming in, so if someone like Robert Scoble, Dave Winer or Louis Gray would like to share their RSS feed for their own best of from FriendFeed, I’ll see if I can create something better again, and I’ll happily share the mashed feed to anyone who wants to use it. The concept may not be perfect, but watching QMeme so far I’ve seen it sharing things that I don’t see on Techmeme, stories that highlight new and interesting startups that have value, and that’s at least a start.

Another small hack is to filter Techmeme so you only get stories about non-major companies. I’ve started a Yahoo Pipe here for those who want it. The pipe takes the Techmeme Firehose and blocks stories from or about Google, Facebook, Twitter, TechCrunch and a few others. If anyone has any suggestions of other companies that should be blocked (I need to add to the list, just haven’t sat down yet to do a full list) feel free to comment.

Let’s not just keep complaining, lets think creatively about new ways we can enable new, smart and interesting startups to rise to the top of our attention cycles.

Sidenote: Two alternatives to check out if you haven’t already: RSSMeme and ReadBurner. RSSMeme is now bringing in public social data, where as ReadBurner is moving into larger sampling audiences. They still suffer somewhat from the noise problem around big stories, but both offer something different.

QMeme Day One

Duncan Riley — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:29:44 +0000

It has been 24 hours since I whipped together and announced the still very much alpha version of QMeme, The Inquisitr’s (and by extension my) very own memetracker based on data from FriendFeed. Aside from acquiring XML and Java for dummies from Borders today I haven’t made any further progress on a native WordPress version so it’s still running via Sprout, with both the positives (easy to design) and negatives (can be slow) that provides.

I was initially concerned as to how the XML feed from FriendFeed may be parsed in terms of updates, I’m happy to report that the page refreshes in full and provides ongoing updates in order as well as providing new stories as they reach the list (vs placing the new stuff on top like the same raw feed does in Google Reader).

I though I’d compare the list on QMeme as I write this post to Techmeme. Now I love Gabe and I’m still a Techmeme addict, but at the dawn of the personal memetracker there are some significant differences in what one delivers over the other in terms of my personal likes.

Lead stories

The top story on Techmeme now is about Google developing an ISP throttling detector. The top story on QMeme is Chris Pirillo saying that he’ll never use BrightKite and that he values his privacy. Now remember QMeme is based on the best content on FriendFeed as voted by my friends, associates and others I follow, so not surprisingly I much prefer the Pirillo item. It’s a little bold, out there, but more importantly there is a really interesting discussion on FriendFeed as well (the link in this case is a FriendFeed entry). Google measuring Comcast throttling BitTorrent traffic…bit to nerdy for me.

Next Two posts

Techmeme: yet another Microsoft-Yahoo post, this time Tim O’Reilly having ago at Michael Arrington, then Andrew Sullivan trying to argue that Google makes us all brain dead in the Times of London. Qmeme has two FriendFeed posts: one discussion based on people’s positions for their name in Google, then an item about reciprocal following on FriendFeed. Honestly none of these overly excite me, however I got more out of the two in QMeme because the discussion was there. But admittedly it was tight call.

4th
Steve Gillmor on TechCrunch seeing dead people vs Scoble responding to people suggesting that he is a paid shill. Scoble wins hands down.

There are more I could compare, but testing this in the middle of the weekend isn’t really fair on either because fluffy items tend to rise to the top when news is quiet. I might try this again mid-week when big stories are breaking to see whether Techmeme has the upper hand.

Not everyone will like content on QMeme as they won’t like the content on Techmeme, but as we enter the age of personalized memetracking there will be many more QMeme style memetrackers out there than there will be versions of Techmeme. FriendFeed users already have this feature from within FriendFeed now, I’m just the first person to take it out of FriendFeed to share it with the world, and I most definitely won’t be the last.

Update: if anyone would like a QMeme widget for their own site or homepage there is now a 300×250 on the right hand side here on The Inquisitr. Click on share for the various options, including support for iGoogle and Netvibes.

Introducing QMeme Alpha

Duncan Riley — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:58:45 +0000

Want to know what the cool kids are talking about on FriendFeed at the moment? Introducing QMeme Alpha, a list of what’s hot on FriendFeed at the moment among the people I follow.

When I say Alpha I really, really mean it. I discovered only hours ago that FriendFeed now offers a RSS feed for the “best of” pages. These pages display the best content from each users friends, so in my case it’s the best content based on the people I follow both now and in the future. The content is not as frequently updated as say Techmeme, but it is frequently updated based on the popularity of items on FriendFeed.

At this stage the page uses Sprout Builder to pull the RSS feed from FriendFeed and display it on the page. The way the feed is formatted makes it difficult to easily show who is liking or commenting on each item, so at this stage QMeme shows only the headline, author and links to the item. For future versions I intend of dropping Sprout Builder and parsing the feed locally, and also provide the supplemental information relating to each item. As I noted above though, it has been a matter of hours, and it’s the middle of the weekend here (and I have other plans ).

I may be the first to use FriendFeed’s data in this way, but I’m betting I won’t be the last. The age of the personal memetracker is here.

Enjoy, and if you want your content to have a chance of being included, add me as a friend on FriendFeed here, and I’ll follow you back within a day or two so you will be included in the tracking (I usually add people in batches).